A LOOK AT THE STORM BEFORE THE LONG QUIET--THROUGH THE EYES OF THE VICTORS, THE LOSERS, THE ONES WHO GOT OUT AND THE ONES WHO DIDN'T

THE SIGNS OF IMPENDING DOOM HAD BEEN MULTIPLYING for at least a month. A headlong bug-out from the Central Highlands in March 1975 signaled that South Vietnam could no longer muster either the strength or the will to hold off the armies sweeping down from the communist North. The fall of Danang late in the month produced scenes of horror that appeared to foreshadow what might happen later in Saigon: panic-maddened South Vietnamese soldiers trampling women and children to get aboard the last American 727 to fly out; desperate soldiers clinging to the landing gear of that plane only to fall...